While no one can be absolutely certain, it looks as if there is no raid by state lawmakers in this year’s state budget of millions of dollars from a fund to ensure improved legal representation for the poor.

Unfortunately, this situation could change at anytime because state lawmakers are legally authorized to sweep the Indigent Legal Services Fund when they are running short of cash. Of course, this is no way to treat poor people who too often already get the short end of the stick.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo can and should put an end to these raids, which have resulted in more than $50 million being transferred to the all-purpose state general fund. He should support overhaul of the state’s public defender system.

The fact that state lawmakers have been routinely raiding the ILS fund is indicative of the current system’s many failures. The fund, set up in 2003 to help localities such as Monroe County meet their constitutional mandate of providing legal services for the poor, gets revenue from fees paid by private companies for criminal background checks, for example. This fee, alone, last year generated more than $53.6 million.

Yet public defender offices statewide continue to complain about heavy caseloads and the lack of adequate staff. Is it any wonder, when money set aside for the poor is being spent elsewhere in the state budget for whatever lawmakers deem necessary?

Monroe County, concerned about rising costs to provide legal services to the poor, floated the idea last year of outsourcing the cases of certain indigent criminal defendants. All across the state, localities are similarly looking for creative — and often misguided — solutions to save money on the backs of poor legal defendants.

Meantime, the Office of Indigent Legal Services, which was supposed to supervise the fund and upgrade the quality of the public defenders system in New York, in addition to having to deal with massive sweeps, has yet to be fully funded or staffed.

Cuomo can take corrective action by settling the so-called Hurrell-Harring lawsuit, which challenges the defects of the state’s public defense system. Rather than going to court in September as scheduled, Cuomo should opt to set up a state-funded public defense system, taking it out of the hands of counties. The reality is that counties are already under intense pressures as a result of Cuomo’s property tax cap and other unfunded mandates. State takeover of public defense can provide relief for both the poor and stressed counties like Monroe.